Wednesday, May 9, 2018

The Unloving and Unfeeling Nature of Capitalism

Modern Society

“Economic injustice is perhaps the most obvious evil of our present system. It would be utterly absurd to maintain that the men who inherit great wealth deserve better of the community than those who have to work for their living. I am not prepared to maintain that economic justice requires an exactly equal income for everybody. Some kinds of work require a larger income for efficiency than others do; but there is economic injustice as soon as a man has more than his share, unless it is because his efficiency in his work requires it, or as a reward for some definite service. But this point is so obvious that it needs no elaboration.”

“We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way they are practiced in America—with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American peoples.”

—James William Fulbright [1905–1995],

“Speech in the U.S. Senate, ”March 27, 1964

“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.”

—Erich Fromm [1900–1980],

Escape from Freedom (1941)

“And any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls—the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul—is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.

—Martin Luther King, Jr [1929–1968].,

Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool (1967)

In the absence of human love and acceptance, money and power becomes a substitute, obtained under capitalism by faithfully serving its economic goals. Life and decisions become easier, uncomplicated; if for example others stand in the way of the pursuit of achievements and success, you try to defeat them, you try to get there first, you try to get all the money. The world is, after all, competitive and resources are limited. Supporting your simple thought life is a slogan that says “greed is good” and a feel-good idea that says there is no such thing as “economic injustice.” It’s just capitalism, baby!

So, here is the interesting part. Although not always put in such crude words, such a view is one commonly held by a good number of persons in America, even if they themselves are being exploited or on the receiving end of said injustice. This is an absurd belief, no doubt, but capitalism continues to be strongly supported, which says much about the system’s strong-hold on people, who fear any change to it, even if it improves their lot. The truth is that very few will succeed, and effort has nothing to do with it. The system is structured to favour the already-wealthy and their children.

Even so, millions of people try at the exclusion of everything important. When a society is structured like this—and America is only the prime example; there are many others, including my country of Canada—human solidarity, which is not only necessary for society, but also for individuals, becomes eroded. Friendship is a good example of social solidarity. Many men today have forgotten about, even denying themselves, friendship in pursuit of financial goals. They have, in effect, traded love, friendship and solidarity for the pursuit of money, often doing so with an insatiable appetite. This is akin to a man eating a large meal alone in a restaurant.

Whether it is greed or gluttony, excesses have long been rewarded in America, hence the poor state of affairs, making America an unhealthy divided nation, where greed is rewarded and economic injustice is ignored. In The Art of Loving, published in 1956, Fromm states such a truth, one that is still true and even more relevant today than when it was written, because we have moved further away from the individual and the solidarity of individuals that makes up a well-functioning society. The individual has been subsumed, and in his place is the automaton:

Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton — well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place.

The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man’s social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.”

The system, however, has not perished, but has become emboldened and stronger, despite the inherent contradictions. It is strong and it survives, but survival does not mean that it is humane, nor excellent nor even good. Despite it being only an economic system, capitalism has been made into a virtue, a noble belief system, notably in America.

It is true that a few can and do live by such a harsh and unforgiving system, but many good and hard-working individuals cannot, many sensitive, intelligent and creative souls cannot. It is understandable that all beliefs fail when they serve only the few instead of the many. Such is the case of American Capitalism. It has contributed to much unhappiness, disappointments and mental breakdowns, without acknowledging its responsibility in the matter.

It has contributed to health problems and a litany of social ills, including making or compelling people to be cruel, nasty and inhumane in the service of the economic machine. Every year, studies show that most Americans hate their jobs. It is the same year after year. People who hate their jobs have difficulty hiding it, and it comes out when serving customers and clients. It has infused and infected every aspect of life in America, not only business and politics where it predominates, but also education, religion and family. It has made intelligent people stupid; and honest people into liars.

The sane, who criticize the staus quo, American Capitalism, as greatly contributing to poor mental health, depression and loneliness, are viewed as malcontents and curmudgeons and, of course, mentally unfit. (“They are just not tough enough.”) In short, such persons, if they are deemed still useful are often managed with a patronizing pat on the back reserved for the dull-witted and the imbecile. The rest are medicated or ignored.

There is no forgiveness in American Capitalism; there is no love in American Capitalism; it is but an unfeeling automaton. When I was young and naive, I used to favour capitalism, even the American kind; then as I got older I saw what it does to people, and how people suffer, often unfairly and unjustly. My heart became alive, and I, too, began to change my thinking. An unease and a dissatisfaction with the staus quo then set in. In other words, I became human.

Yiddish Sites

There are dozens of sites dedicated to Yiddish language, culture and music. Here are some that I have found noteworthy. I will add to the list regularly. If you have a Yiddish site or know of one, please do not hesitate to contact me at pjgreenbaum@gmail.com:

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Afn Shvel (“On the Threshold”), a magazine published by the League for Yiddish, dating to 1941, it is committed to the promotion and preservation of the Yiddish language and culture. It published two double issues a year. Its editor-in-chief is Sheva Zucker;

American Jewish Archive at Hebrew Union College’s Jewish Institute of Religion contains more than 10 million pages of documents. manuscripts, genealogical materials, as well as thousands of audiovisual recordings, photographs, microfilm and digital collections;Committee For Yiddish, in Toronto, in partnership with UJA Federation, fosters and promotes Yiddish language and culture—indeed the entire Ashkenaz tradition—as a vibrant part of contemporary Jewish life and as a vital link between the Jewish past and future

Center for Jewish History, in New York City, has 5 miles of archival material (in dozens of languages), more than 500,000 volumes, as well as thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings and photographs;

Forverts (“Forward”), one of the first mass Yiddish newspapers in America, founded in New York City in 1897;Jewish Folk Songs, by Batya Fonda, is a series of lectures given in either English or Hebrew about the ways folk songs reflect different themes of Jewish heritage;

Golden Age of Yiddish Radio, the 1930s to the 1950s, is brought to you by the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture in Miami, Florida.

JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, a database of more than 1,000 yizkor books worldwide, a good number of them have been translated from Hebrew and Yiddish into English;

Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jews, from Columbia University, consists of 5,755 hours of audio tape interviews with Yiddish-speaking Jews from Central and eastern Europe, done between 1959 and 1972 along with around 100,000 pages of linguistic field notes;

Lexilogos, a compilation of Yiddish online resources, including dictionaries, grammar books, and a translation of the Torah (Toyre) in Yiddish;

Milken Archive of Jewish Music, a record of the American Jewish Experience; since 1990, it has become the largest collection of American Jewish music with about 600 recorded works, including a number in Yiddish;

Museum of the Yiddish Theatre, an online museum originating in New York City and founded by Dr. Steven Lasky, has in its collection such items as photographs, theatre programs, sheet music, audio recordings and other documents of some importance and historical significance;

Pakn Treger, (“itinerant bookseller in Eastern Europe who traveled from shtetl to shtetl ”), the magazine of the Yiddish Book Centre;

Recorded Sound Archives (RSA) of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton contains more than 100,000 recordings of music, a great many in Yiddish;

Songs of My People, a site by Josephine Yalovitser dedicated to Yiddish songs of mourning and of joy;

The National Center For Jewish Film, based at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is the home to 15,000 reels of feature films, documentaries, newsreels, home movies and institutional films, dating from 1903 to the present; this effort has led to the revival of Yiddish cinema;

Yizkor Book Collection at the New York Public Library provide a documentation of daily life, through essays and photographs and the memoralizing of murdered residents, of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Of the 750 yizkor books in its collection, 618 have been digitalized. Most yizkor books are in Yiddish or Hebrew;

Yungtruf (“call to youth”), the site says, “cultivates the active use of the Yiddish language among today’s youth here and abroad by creating opportunities for Yiddish learning and immersion, and by providing resources and support for Yiddish speakers and families within an expansive social network”;